I'll sleep when in dead.

We woke up at 7 am the next day to get ready for Fuji, but there was one catch. We weren't climbing Fuji yet. Tyler's family friend, Hagi, picked us up from Tokyo for what we thought would be a Fuji day trip. Nope. We were going to Fuji at night, ad in climbing through the night so we could reach the summit by morning. Well, we should probably just rest the whole day to get ready to climb the country's largest mountain. Wrong again.

We tried to communicate to Hagi that sleep is something you need to function, much less live, and at the very least to climb a mountain.  Well, he had other things in mind. Instead he wanted to show us around more of Tokyo, so we visited the Sony building, got the absolute best tonkatsu I've had in my life, and walked around Shibuya for a few hours. Then, around 5 Hagi picked up his friend Tanaka-san and we headed to dinner at the base of Fuji.

I think I'll take a moment to tell you a bit about Hagi. This guy is a piece of work. He's 60, but he never slows down. He takes Michael Jackson dance lessons, climbs mountains, drives like a maniac, and apparently only listens to his Rod Stewart CD. All. The. Time. He's a great guy, but Hagi-san wa hen desu. He's a bit different.

We ended up at this local noodle house shaped like a dome, where I promptly hit my head on the entrance. My good luck didn't stop there. The menu was completely in Japanese, so our local friends ordered food for us. A big bow of udon noodles, some rice, and raw horse meat. That's right, it came back. As soon as I saw seabiscuit staring at me from the plate, I knew that somebody up there didn't like me very much. But that's fine. I've galluped down that culinary path, and I wad through. Until Tanaka challenged me to eat one. I couldn't back down from that. America was riding on my shoulders. So I saddled up and did my duty. I ate raw horse for the second day in a row.

With full bellies we started our descent to the summit of Fuji around 11 pm. By the way, I brought no mountain climbing clothes whatsoever, so I just wore my flannel short and jeans. That screams "mountain man", right?

Apparently it's a holiday weekend here, and everybody and their mother decided to climb Fuji on the same night. The trails were packed, but that didn't stop our pilgrimage.  After 6 hours we reach the summit (mountain climbing is what the vowel averse might call srs bsnss) to see the sun rise over the Japanese countryside. Was there a word for how beautiful the orange soaked landscape appeared that morning? Probably, but I was too exhausted to formulate words, so I just sat and watched, occasionally fiddling with my camera.

I just want to emphasize this one more time. We didn't sleep that night. Instead we decided to climb a mountain. Not just any mountain. Mt. Fuji. As ridiculous as that is, and believe me it was, it kinda puts certain things into perspective.  It's kinda strange what you can accomplish with a little willpower, perseverance, and a 60 year old Japanese man that doesn't give you any other options.

After 12 straight hours of climbing and descending, the deed was done, the mountain was conquered, and we were incredibly, incredibly sleep deprived. But wait, there's no time for sleep! Hagi had to take us to Atsuo's house near Tokyo. Atsuo is a family friend of my family's friend. I could probably make some sort of Kevin Bacon joke there, but I'm just a tad sleep deprived. I'm sitting in Atsuo's house as I write this. We just arrived and I have yet to meet his family. I just know I'll be looking forward to a nice warm bed tonight...